South Arica’s state utility Eskom is undermining the development of renewable energy in South Africa, writes Professor Hartmut Winkler of the University of Johannesburg. According to Winkler, the country’s coal and nuclear lobbies are behind the opposition to renewables. The struggle is part of a wider political confrontation over control of key parts of the South African economy. Courtesy The Conversation. … [Read more...]

Electricity prices in Europe will become volatile, variable renewable energy will grow but will still be supplemented significantly by conventional power plants. These are of some of the main outcomes of the power price scenario EU Energy Outlook 2050, released by Energy Brainpool. One of the major question marks for the power sector will be the development of e-mobility, write Carlos Perez-Linkenheil and Simon Göß. … [Read more...]

Not so long ago, nuclear power was seen as “the new energy” that would drown the world in cheap electricity. It didn’t turn out that way. Now the same promise is made for renewables. Andreas de Vries looks at went wrong in the nuclear case and warns that the renewables sector could be in for a disappointment if it does not avoid making the same mistakes. … [Read more...]

The United States has allowed itself to fall behind in nuclear power technology and market development, writes author and thorium expert Robert Hargraves. Regulations have unnecessarily driven up costs of nuclear power and scared the public. According to Hargraves, to revive the nuclear sector, the first steps that needs to be taken are to fight historical fear-creating radiation regulations with science, and to replace the federal regulator, the … [Read more...]

Minna Forsström is responsible for a unique project: the first Russian-made nuclear power plant to be built in the E.U. outside of the former Soviet Union. In a personal interview with Energy Post, she reveals how her company, Fennovoima, has coped with extremely demanding regulatory challenges (“you can’t expect to submit a project and have it approved all in one go”), why they chose to work with Rosatom (“they have huge engineering capacity and … [Read more...]

Ironically, Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement will hurt two sectors that his administration would like to protect: the nuclear and the coal power industry, writes Washington DC-based energy author Dennis Wamsted. This is because without a Federal climate policy, neither nuclear power nor carbon capture and storage (CCS) will get the support they need. … [Read more...]

If you’re in the energy business, here is a new manual for you that lays out the essentials of what energy is and how it shapes geopolitics today. Professor and long-time European Commission official Samuele Furfari has condensed his 39 years of experience in the energy sector into a two-volume tome of more than 1,250 pages that goes right from the fundamentals of physics through Britain’s rule of the Middle East to modern day realities such as … [Read more...]